09.06.17 Her Space Holiday "Japanese Gum" (Until there's nothing left to love until there's nothing left to say)

I know the blog seems a little discombobulated. I apologize for it. I'm rediscovering posts hidden in the depths of my blackberry. This is a post written before I got to Salida, CO on the 17th of June. It is before this latest section in which I traveled between Salida and Leadville.

It is a brief description of my last day on the trail on the section between San Luis Pass and Monarch Pass.



Hopefully, eventually, I'll find my stride. Bear with me. Or not.







I open my tent flap at 5:45, blinking into my frozen, off-yellow, mud bathed shoes. I can see the insoles are wearing a little already. 200 miles of walking will do that. Since I have a bit of alcohol left, I light my stove and hold the icey footwear above the flames, melting the outside just enough to slip my red, swollen feet into the tops. I walk around my campsight with my toes only halfway wedged in the blocks of ice I call shoes and I suddenly know how high-heels must feel like.

After putting on everything I own for warmth and doing a few jumping jacks and pushups, I start refilling my backpack. My food bag looks pathetic and emaciated. One dinner left, 10 clif bars to go, 24 miles till the highway.

Around me, my campmates are similarly huddled but they are much further along in their packing endeavors. Soon, I am forced to slip my hands out of my precious gore-tex gloves and dip them into the morass of my icey tent. The stuff sack seems so small and the tent seems outrageously cumbersome, stiff, and cold. This is most painful moment of the morning. I don't have smaller, more dexterous fleece gloves and I cannot use stand the clumsiness of my ski gloves, thus I persist, naked hands grinding against the frozen polymers of the tent. Miraculously (each time I think this thought) and after much cursing, the tent fits in its stuffsack home.

Whirling around, I confront my companions, all more than 20 years my senior and all morning people. They are also in incredible shape, often dragging and cajoling my shell of a stick-figure the last 5 miles of each 20 mile day. I've spent the last few days with them and found myself tired and lagging each time, but today I am motivated. I smell town.

I announce that I am in "town mode" and they agree. But, I tell by their wayward glances and hollow voices that they haven't slept well. They don't have the recovery capabilities of youth.

We camped at 9600 in a river valley next to the Tank Seven River, CO (google it if interested). Climbs of more than 1000 feet await us. Around Big Windy Peak and through the snow.



I accelerate up the hill and trudge, my Ipod squarely blaring in one ear, over the summit.

After 11 miles of grueling hiking, I find myself at Marshall Pass, CO and promptly lose the trail. I'm 2 hours ahead of my friend and panicking and frustrated, I try in vain to relocate the trail.



Eventually, I return the last known spot, defeated. My friends catch up and with their help, I discover the trail right under my nose.



Almost 10 miles of snow trudging awaits. Blurry and tired, I spy a robin. I think about eating it. I think of tearing the feathers off and snapping its neck. I am Sylvester the cat after he's gulped Tweety, only there are blue robin feathers coming out of my mouth. The bird is still squirming between my teeth. It is trying to burrow out between my shadowy, out-turned bicuspid and canine.

I'm not even that hungry. I need to get to town.







And then we go up. Towards the black ghostly clouds of rain and hail. Towards the ice cornices and the deep, sinking, envelping snow. Snow so deep that when I sink in, exhausted, there are glimmers in my brain that tell me to remain there until August. Let it melt around me. Stay there and don't move. Ever again.






The next 5 miles are hazy imprints of adrenalin and pounding and wind. I almost fell down a 100 foot ice chute. And I didn't even get a picture. This is a sorta good one. It was too much effort to reach for the camera a second time when I had the angle.



Monarch Pass at 12k+.




Never again, I say to myself.

But, I know I will.

The first car we see, an astrovan, slows in the shoulder of Interstate 50. We crumple in. Later that night I eat an entire 16' Dominoes pizza and sleep for 10 hours.




In my unblinking, unmoving slumber, I dream I have torn the face from a beautiful woman. I later convince everyone that it wasn't me who de-faced this girl. To prove it, I perform a miraculous surgery attaching a new face on the blank, oozing skeleton.

Later in the dream, I build a red skyscraper. The building blocks the views of a very important city aristocrat.




Song Honorable Mention:

-The Killer's "All these That I've Done" (While everyone's lost, the battle is won)